Published 30-06-2025
Keywords
- affective resistance,
- activism,
- forced migration,
- feminist craft,
- decolonial fashion
- emotional,
- sustainability,
- situated making,
- transnational solidarity,
- fashion and memory,
- slow fashion,
- collective memory ...More
How to Cite
Copyright (c) 2025 Ludmila Christeseva, Elena Volkova
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
Roses of Ties is a socially engaged fashion and craft initiative led by Belarusian-born, Sweden-based artist Ludmila Christeseva, in collaboration with the Women of Artten collective. Emerging in response to the Russo-Ukrainian war and the forced migration of women, the project invites participants-primarily Ukrainian and Eastern European refugees-to transform donated men’s neckties into rose-shaped brooches. In this process, a symbol of patriarchal authority is reimagined through feminist care work, embodied memory, and shared ritual.
This article explores Roses of Ties as a situated fashion practice that foregrounds gendered resistance, emotional durability, and the politics of making. Drawing on feminist theory, craft studies, and decolonial fashion discourse, the project exemplifies how collective making can function as both healing and political action. By reframing fashion as a site of affective passage, Roses of Ties challenges the extractive logic of fast fashion and offers an alternative vision rooted in joy, care, and transnational solidarity. Here, brooches become living archives-quietly resisting erasure and stitching feminist futurities out of grief, displacement, and loss.
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